


you're gone but you're on my mind

by getmean



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, IKEA Furniture, Mental Health Issues, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10755978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: The black t-shirt is important. The black t-shirt is washed thin, so worn and clearly well loved that it’s barely one step away from grey. It rides high on his hips whenever he lifts his arms, and Shayla shamelessly exploits this all afternoon long.





	you're gone but you're on my mind

**Author's Note:**

> god i'm so fucking emo about shayla guys

Shayla had moved in a little while after him. Or at least, she thinks so. It’s hard to tell. A brief glimpse of his apartment showed bare walls and floors, like he’d only lived there a few weeks, but his name on his mailbox is tattered and fading so Shayla can’t work it out. Elliot Alderson. _The enigma_ , she silently fills in, and scratches at the A with her fingernail. She files the name away for safekeeping, down somewhere deep where the bad parts of her life can’t touch it. She owes him that, at least. He’d seemed like a nice boy from their single encounter in the tight little hallway outside their doors.

Really, it’s anyone’s guess.

He’s pretty, and quiet, but she’d heard him moving around in the early hours of the morning in his own apartment, the walls so thin it felt almost intimate to lie in bed and listen to him pace. She can’t help but wonder if they resonated on the same frequency, the same beat that fucked up people drum to, people who don’t sleep too good and cope a little unhealthily. Or maybe he’s just an insomniac, plain and simple. Still, the hollows under his eyes, sallow skin and the smell of cigarettes through the wall tell Shayla all she needs to know.

A week or so after she had moved in, Shayla shaves her legs, puts on her smallest shirt, and knocks on his front door to ask for his help with some furniture. He’s nice, a little awkward, obviously stoned. His big green eyes didn’t leave her face through their entire exchange, the two of them standing in the doorway to his strange, bare apartment. There’s something intense in his gaze, hazy and stoned as it is, and Shayla feels so inexplicably small under it that she wants to run and hide. She’s so used to guys barely sparing her a glance, despite how entangled they may have been, and to have all of her odd neighbour’s focus on her was exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

Shayla believes that everyone has good in them, no matter how far below the surface that good may be. If she does, then anyone has to. She doesn’t have to dig deep to see the good in Elliot: it shines out of him from just the careful way he looks at her, like he doesn’t want to scare her but like he can’t tear his eyes away. Yes, she feels small under it, but some part of her feels powerful for it, attractive, _wanted_.

“I’ll reward you in weed.” She offers, because she believes firmly in taking nothing without offering something in return. Elliot’s big, eerie eyes widen at that, lips quirking in bemusement.

“I’ll help you out for nothing.” He says, voice low and husky like he’s just gone down on someone, like he’s just taken a hit. She feels herself colour, embarrassed, catches the _why?_ that wants loose of her to keep from breaking the odd little bubble she’s found herself in. Leaned up against the peeling paint of Elliot’s doorway, the stuff flaking onto her clothes, his big eyes on her like he could unpack everything that made her _Shayla_ in one moment.

He’s wearing a black t-shirt, and Shayla watches him assemble her cheap, tacky IKEA furniture later on with a single mindedness that screamed _obsessive_ and she thought, _interesting_.

The black t-shirt is important. The black t-shirt is washed thin, so worn and clearly well loved that it’s barely one step away from grey. It rides high on his hips whenever he lifts his arms, and Shayla shamelessly exploits this all afternoon long. The moment in the hall, the moment of breathless fear that somehow Elliot would _see_ her was gone. She’s stoned, he is too, and she can’t remember the last time she’d had a boy in her apartment that had made her feel so at ease.

The air is blue with smoke, and she feels wrapped up in the warm sunlight, in Elliot’s low voice as he says, “I guess I just have a knack for it,” in reply to her surprise at how good with Swedish furniture he is. The corner of his mouth pulls in a smile, and it’s so small and special that she laughs, tips sideways onto the floor and watches him from that angle. Her heart thuds in her chest, something affectionate and happy blooming there.

Elliot is wiry, and he’s strong but it’s obvious he doesn’t get enough food. Cute in a skinny way, like a rescue dog, or a cat you lure close with treats but won’t let you pet it. Those pointy little ears and big, darting eyes give him an impish look, and she decides right away that she likes him. Maybe she’d decided in the hall, or further back after the glimpse of his apartment, or finding his name so neatly spelled out on his mailbox. Round, careful letters like he normally writes in unintelligible chicken scratch but had tried hard so the mailman wouldn’t have to strain his eyes. He’s sweet. Quiet, dry with his humour and slow with conversation but so overwhelmingly _nice_ to her that she feels almost smothered with it. Almost.

 _Yeah_ , she thinks as she hands him her Swiss army knife, watches him fit together a bedside table in no time at all. She could settle in here fine. 

His curls end up stuck to his forehead with sweat by the end of the afternoon, from the effort of shifting her bedframe around in the tiny, air conditioner-less room. His biceps are long and lean in his arms, hollow of his throat shiny as Shayla sits back and lets him do the work. She deserves this, at least.

Later that night, she lies in the bed he’d put together and she works herself slick with her vibrator, imagining his big, capable fingers inside of her, his mouth on her nipples, her throat, her clit.

\------

He does a line of morphine off her coffee table a month later, and coughs, shakes his head a little as he rubs at his nose. She watches, playing with the pill bottle, the rattling of what’s inside very far away. She’s stoned too, but Elliot is on his way to fucked up and she’s smiling as he leans back against the couch with a sigh. His knees part, body going loose as the morphine hits, and she imagines herself between them. Imagines what his cock is like, whether he gets hard on pills or not. 

“Good?” She asks, and her voice is husky even to her ears. Elliot mumbles something unintelligible, and she gets up from her perch at the kitchen table to take a seat next to him. He doesn’t react when she pushes her bare feet under this thigh, so she leaves them there.

It started with weed, mostly him buying it to smoke alone, or sometimes with a blonde who came around less and less. Then, he’d said to her in that measured, slow voice of his: can you get me morphine?

Shayla had looked him in his big pale eyes, and thought, _fucked up recognises fucked up._

He doesn’t usually get high at her place. Tonight is an oddity, an aberration, and she thinks he must’ve had a hard day at work because he’s still wearing the dorky shirt he calls uniform. It’s too big on his skinny frame, billowy in the arms and the collar large around his neck. 

She thinks about that thin black t-shirt, and leans forward to whisper, “Can I take your work shirt off?”

“Mmm.” He breathes, and she waits, hands tucked close to her belly and feet steadily warming under his thigh. “Yeah.” He says, and tugs at his collar with a clumsy hand. His eyes are heavy lidded and glazed, and when she takes over for him he smiles, that odd little quirk of his mouth. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” She says, and drops the pile of blue polyster to the floor. Surely enough, he’s wearing that faded old t-shirt underneath, riding up on his belly from how he’s slumped boneless against the couch. She touches her fingers to the trail of dark hair leading into his pants, and he turns his face against the back of the couch to look at her, mouth a little open, eyes dark.

Shayla feels like she’s toeing some unspoken line, somewhere deep in the back of her stoned mind. Her nose feels numb from the morphine, spreading out across her face, and she knows she looks just as fucked out as Elliot does. She knows he doesn’t like being touched, normally, but doesn’t miss the way he slouches lower in his seat, spreads his thighs a little.

A jolt of lazy warmth goes through her, and she presses her thighs together. 

“Can I kiss you?” He asks, and she smiles.

He kisses her clumsy, eager, one big hand coming up to cup her jaw. It’s endearing, and she presses closer, slings a leg over his lap until she’s straddling him. It’s slow, lazy, and he presses his tongue against her own, breathes a moan into the kiss as she tilts his face up with both her hands and takes over.

The vague sense of submission of it all makes her feel hot between her legs, and she kisses him stupid, until they’re both breathing heavy, lips swollen. Elliot’s hands are on her waist, and she thinks, _big, capable_ and tries to ignore how she’s been making herself cum to the image of his face between her thighs for weeks. 

“Don’t ask next time.” She murmurs, and he breathes out a laugh that makes her grin, silly and stoned. 

\------

He doesn’t ask next time, just catches her by the wrist as she moves past him and pulls her into his body. It’s better this time, the two of them still a little buzzed but nothing like before. She feels safe tucked into his body, his mouth slow and steady against her own.

They’re in his apartment, for once. Shayla had wanted to meet his fish, and he’d shyly let her in and apologised for the mess. It wasn’t messy, a few mugs in the sink and the sweet smell of pot in the air, the sheets on his bed unmade. She’d taken in the glowing consoles, the mirror on the coffee table, waved hello to the fish, and then had lit half a joint from the ashtray on the kitchen counter like she belonged. He’d smiled at her, hesitant and sweet, and she’d just put the joint in his mouth and pressed his face between his palms, overwhelmed by his scrutiny.

She has him backed up against the counter, now, hands under his shirt and tracing his lean belly as he kisses her. His hands are on her jaw like she’s something glass fragile and precious, and she wants to tell him _you know you can hurt me, right?_ but doesn’t know how to say it. She’s never been held so gently, and she isn’t sure she likes it but she lets him because she wants to make him happy.

Elliot is never, ever happy. Shayla realised that not long after he spent that long, liminal afternoon putting furniture together with deft hands.

She unzips the fly of his jeans, grins into his throat at the gasp that leaves him as she worms her hand inside his underwear. He’s hot and hard in her hand, and she hasn’t seen his cock yet, this is something brand new, but she _wants_.

They move from the counter, Shayla giggling as Elliot breaks away from her to pull his t-shirt over his head. His hair is sticking up from the static, curls boyish and sweet, and she presses her palms to his chest, thumbs over his nipples to make him bite his lip.

“Can I?” He asks, fingers toying with the hem of her t-shirt as he backs her up against the sofa. The back of her knees hit it, and she goes down willingly, tugs him with her. 

“Didn’t I tell you to stop asking?” 

The fly of his jeans is still gaping, his hand gripped around the outline of his hard cock almost absentmindedly, and Shayla shouldn’t find it so hot but it _is_. His pupils are wide, drugs and arousal, and once he gets her naked from the waist up he groans, presses his face between her breasts and pulls her closer. She grips his hair in her fingers, feeling sensitive and electric all over, like she could cum from the rough catch of a callus against the swell of her breast, from the way Elliot sighs into her skin like she’s a marvel.

Elliot is intense. Elliot is a storm caught inside a skin too small for everything he is and everything he could be. His mouth on her nipples brings her up fast, gets her moaning for real and not that showy, silly way she gets with guys who don’t know what they’re doing. Elliot _does_ and it’s shocking, but the surprise is good, the surprise adds another layer to the pleasure thrumming through her. 

“Tell me what’s good for you.” He murmurs, lips barely leaving the spit-slick swell of her breast. Her nipples are hard, red from his tongue and his teeth, and he looks drunk on it. His long, dark lashes dip once, twice, soft little blinks as he presses a kiss to the centre of her chest, then another just below her navel. She twists her fingers in his curls, watches him dip his tongue into her navel. He can’t keep his mouth off her.

“You’re gonna do what I say?.” She asks, and when he glances up she presses her thumb to his lips until he opens up, completely bidding. “Go down on me.”

He nods, eyes glazed and tongue curling around the tip of her thumb as she presses it into his mouth. It’s like a tease, the heat of his mouth, and she imagines how it would feel on her pussy before she tilts her hips up, wanting.

Elliot is like no-one she’s ever been with before, and she wants his deft, big fingers inside her, she wants the attention and the care and the complete devotion she sees in his eyes. “Do it, then.” She murmurs, and Elliot ducks his head almost like he’s been scolded, slips her underwear down her thighs.

The heat and wetness of his tongue is shocking, and Shayla desperately tries to track back to when she’d last been eaten out but can’t even remember. Elliot’s into it, making little sounds against her pussy as he dips his tongue inside her, replaces it with his fingers as he draws up to focus on her clit.

“ _Yes_.” She breathes, and there’s a strange sort of power in how willingly Elliot lets himself be held down by her, fingers knotted in his hair.

Time crawls, barely real and treacle-slow. It’s the weed, the fact that Shayla likes him so bad she wants to curl up and sleep with him, after. The little black fish does loops of his bowl, and Elliot is so pliant against her that Shayla feels all full up from a power she’s never felt before. His mouth against her is deliberate, eager like he wants to draw all the pleasure from her that he can, and it’s overwhelming.

She grinds her hips up against her face, and his answering moan lights something deep inside her that makes her murmur, “Eat me out like you mean it,” and God, he did. She’d never had a guy press his face into her pussy like he loved it before, but Elliot was sucking on her clit like he was made for it. She tugs on his hair, and his answering moan thrums through Shayla better than her vibrator ever could.

She comes wet and messy on his face and his fingers, and presses his face into the mess she’s made onto the couch by the back of his head as she shivers through it. He goes willingly, panting out little turned on moans like she’s fucking him good, not pressing his face into her own cum.

Shayla lets him jerk off onto her chest afterwards, mouth open on a half smile, half moan as he comes on her with a groan. His cock is just the right side of thick that she knows that if he fucked her she’d feel it afterwards, a welcome ache, and the thought of him inside her makes her tilt her head back against the back of the couch and close her eyes.

Afterwards, they relocate to his bed. She holds him close, his face tucked into her throat like he belongs there, and she thinks, _I could work with this_.

\-----

“Hey,” she says, and Elliot doesn’t react. Her scarf whips around her, the smell of trash on the wind. “Are you okay?”

Elliot is sitting hunched on the steps of their apartment. A cigarette is burning down between his fingers, forgotten, and he stares at something in the middle distance that she can’t even begin to fathom.

“Elliot.” She says, and Elliot moves then, takes a drag off his ailing cigarette and frowns.

“I’m fine.” He murmurs, and then, as an afterthought, “I need some Suboxone.”

“Okay,” She says, slow, and takes a seat on the cold concrete next to him. “Is that the problem?” 

He doesn’t respond, and Shayla thinks, God, he must be cold. He’s only wearing that hoodie of his, eyes peering out of the hood like the grim reaper. Hungry, haunted. She presses her fingers to her lips. 

People pass by, and it’s New York so they don’t even register the two of them, shivering on the concrete in the late September chill. She’s only wearing leggings, but she’s willing to wait it out until Elliot gets out of his head enough to move off the stoop. Her ass is cold, and she watches the street until he thaws and murmurs, “It’s my birthday.”

“Oh,” She says, surprised because she’s never even thought about the possibility of Elliot having anything as normal as a birthday, and then feels immediately bad about it. “Shit, dude. Happy birthday.”

“Yeah,” Is all Elliot says, and then, “So, you got Suboxone?”

Sometimes Shayla feels like Elliot lives in an odd little pocket between the real world and complete and utter madness. His one track mind of his is good for sex and little else outside of it. He’s skinnier than the guy who’d put together her stupid, cheap furniture and it makes her ache in some distant part of herself that she’s unfamiliar with.

“You know you gotta tell me _before_ you run out.” She reminds him, instead of all the things building up in the back of her throat. She watches the anxious twist of his hands, picking at a loose thread on the cuff of his hoodie. “That’s how that shit works.” 

“Sure,” He says, “I forgot. I know.”

He’s selfish, in down deep down part of himself that she’s not sure he’s aware of. She loves him in the same way. “I can get some for you.” She offers, and he presses his cheek to his shoulder to gaze at her, oddly vulnerable. “You got the shakes?”

“A little.” He admits, always cagey, and after that he lets himself be dragged upstairs to her apartment. It’s cosier than his own, despite the bad memories that linger, and he lets her wrap an old quilt around him, push a cup of tea into his hands. She offers him a joint instead of the morphine she knows he wants, and Shayla can tell he’s attempting not to feel resentful about it. 

She twists her fingers into his hair, smiles at the way he tilts his head into the touch and thinks, _fucking junkies_.

“You got a wish, birthday boy?” She asks, quiet, and he closes his eyes. The joint sheds ash on the blanket with the quivering of his hands, and God, Shayla wants to keep him from the world. The shadows under his eyes look like bruises; she wonders if he’d flinch if she passed her thumb over them. Belatedly, she realises he’s crying. “Oh, Elliot.” She murmurs, and his face twists as he turns away from her, shame and anger and true sadness.

“Don’t.” He croaks, curling further into himself as she tries to touch him. “Leave me _alone_.”

It hurts, and she rears back like she’s been hit. She knows he’s just junk sick and miserable so the words shouldn’t matter but it stings nonetheless. “I don’t want to.” She says, voice small, and Elliot presses his hands to his face and exhales shaky slow. _We used to have fun_ , she thinks, watching him wipe tears from his face. 

“Okay, okay.” Elliot says after a minute, sniffs loudly and then reaches for her. 

“Let me take care of you.” She murmurs, and Elliot’s eyes are big and watery in his pale face, full of pain like he’s sending her to the executioner, not letting her put an arm around him and draw him close. Thin, age-soft fabric under her hand, and she strokes her fingers over his shoulder just to feel it. “Elliot?”

He doesn’t say anything, and Shayla thinks _selfish, selfish, selfish_ like a tattoo pounding in her brain. His lips are pursed, eyes fixed on the nervous twist of his fingers in his lap. Always has to suffer alone like the martyr he’s going to be if he keeps at it. 

“I’m sorry.” Elliot offers, and she just rubs her hand over his arm and keeps her mouth shut, waiting. “That I’m not easy.” The final part is murmured quiet and soft like a secret, like it’s not something he’s ever said out loud. Shayla knows too well about those sort of secrets.

“Never asked you to be.” She says, and then, “You don’t let yourself be looked after a lot, huh?” 

Elliot huffs, a sardonic half-laugh. “Not many people offer.”

Sometimes Shayla thinks they’re too alike for comfort. Elliot’s eyebrows are drawn together as he picks at his cuticles, a twitchy, withdrawal-antsy habit of his. One blooms red with blood, and he sticks it in his mouth quickly. Shayla feels something almost like grief spread in her chest.

“Well,” She whispered, catching his fidgety hands in hers before he could hurt himself. “I’m offering.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :^)


End file.
